WOMENS PARTICIPATION IN NEWSPRINT MEDIA
The growth of newspaper industry in Zimbabwe has grown rapidly during the 90’s that is why more and more newspapers have come their way. Newspapers like Zimbabwe Independent, the Standard and Sunday Gazette were among the highly saleable in print but the problem occur during the early 2000 because of political reasons and restriction of media relation there were also drastic media repression and domination of production that many newspaper companies are forced to shut down their operation. Some would speculate that the world recession makes this newspaper production lack the resources to build their news in print.
But the truth is that the use of government legislation has stopped their operation including their personnel and reporters may need to find a new job since its closure. Due to this reason even the International news have been blocked or apparently banned temporarily but without condition of operation. Only a few international news makers have been left but they themselves have been affected upon the critical issues, only a few numbers of magazines have been released but they are careful about political issue for they were afraid to be banned or closed down.
The threat in media have also stopped newspaper to launch their prints, almost only the government newspapers has been released due to the threat of closure and ban by the government. Those who tried to renew their operation have experienced hostile operating workflow and the political issue during this season has been critical. During that time there are only print media that can only publish light issue but not the present political repression and by this time there is no news about political constraint even in television because it’s all been banned and controlled. Even the community newspapers coming from the government have been turning issues on the other side to protect the issues in politics.
The role of women paved its way through their own initiative to promulgate new laws that will embodied and retain the production of newspapers as a form of transparency in the society as one of their goal. Women in Zimbabwe have long been constrained to do household jobs, raise their children and never participate in political issues but women would like to change its culture in Zimbabwe that is why their contribution in mass media needs to be analyzed and implement in the process. Even if they were ignored, groups of women in politics voice out their grievances are opposed; the political situation has been blocking the media.
In order to be heard they formed a group called (WiPSU) Women in Politics Support Unit, this organization would collect data’s coming from various women’s groups to participate in daily monitoring of available newspapers and data will be collected reviewed and analyzed to of how women would portray the role of the society and its implication to the society. This data will present their ideals if there is a progress in the state to assess and ensure that their voices will be heard in whatever circumstance.
The role of women who have a position in politics is to give references to the articles of women in order for the articles to be qualified and included in the news since men would not approved most of articles coming from women. Articles that cover political inclusion and empowerment are qualified since it involved constitutional framework and in other places they have achieved several position and women are elected in the parliament. The women even insist on parliament council to strengthen their position and this has been the result of their hard work, unity and dedication of women’s participation in print media; there were 20 articles publish in 4 months or less, 17 articles more are included about women’s political empowerment and more than a hundred articles have been included in councils, parliaments and urban women participation were also included.
There were issues like women as a victim of violence, women’s political party, women and political works and many others. The continuous unity and support of women’s official and there members lead them to participate more and more empowered article inclusion in newspapers and other forms of media that address to the people and its government to give the women the opportunity to strengthen themselves through the use of media and to change the political constraint in their country.
They were able to establish at least 19 women’s initiative in print media involving women’s concern and contribution, the report has been deployed and scattered all over the land there were also clashes and meeting of minds between women because of the challenges and criticism they have been facing. Slowly the print media has been becoming regularized in their production in this present time and women still strive for their position in empowerment. Such figure above is not important but their courage to be heard has been very successful while on the twist of political constraint, they have pressed on their contribution in the society during the year of 2000 to 2002 where print media or newspapers has been restricted.
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